by D. J. Taylor
In Lothbury there were clerks wandering to and fro and bank messengers going importantly about their business, and a ducal carriage setting down its occupant on the pavement, but Mr Happerton took no notice of any of them. He was thinking of Scroop Hall, and its great wild garden and Tiberius in his stable, and the wind tearing in off the wolds. He took another cab in the direction of the West End, had himself set down at the foot of Shaftesbury Avenue and went off along the southern side of Piccadilly. Clearly Mr Happerton was not in any hurry. He looked in the window of Mr Manton’s gunshop. He walked into Mr Anstruther’s the tailors and had himself measured for a suit of black-cloth. He marched up to the counter of the florist hard by and gave an address to which all manner of blooms were straightaway to be sent. Then he turned into St James’s Street and went into a little club called the Stoneleigh. He could see Captain Raff in the window as he strode up, and found that gentleman in the hallway as he made his entrance.
‘What’s the hurry, Raff?’ Mr Happerton said, as he handed his hat to the servant. ‘Anyone would think you were anxious to see us.’
‘Anxious?’ said Captain Raff. ‘I ain’t anxious, but – well.’
‘Well what?’
‘A fellow can’t talk here. You had better step up to the billiard room.’
The billiard room at the Stoneleigh looked out onto a grim little court where white duck trousers were hung out on a line to dry. Captain Raff made a listless attempt at play, struck a couple of balls desultorily, watched them tumble into the pockets and made a phantom stroke with his cue.
‘Well,’ he said. ‘I have seen him.’
Mr Happerton was looking down into the grim court. ‘I daresay you have,’ he replied. ‘I’ll not see him myself. You must tell him that.’
‘Oh, I shall tell him … I say, Happerton,’ Captain Raff went on, ‘you couldn’t lend me ten guineas, could you?’
‘What on earth for?’
‘Well – the fact is, my subscription here is owing. And it’s so deuced awkward, you know, having the secretary come up to one when there are fellows standing about.’
Mr Happerton thought that he really was very tired of Captain Raff. Nonetheless, he furnished the ten guineas. Then, lowering his voice, he said: ‘So when is the affair to come off?’
The promise of the ten guineas had not raised Captain Raff from the pit of absolute gloom in which he appeared to be sunk. ‘A week. A fortnight. I say, Happerton’ – Captain Raff’s face as he said this was quite piteous – ‘ain’t you taking no end of a risk?’
‘I don’t see that I am. Who is to know about it, eh? Why, it is you that has been visiting him, not I.’
‘But if – if he was to get caught.’
‘He won’t get caught.’
‘And then you have the horse already, you know. In that stable in Lincolnshire. And don’t tell me you haven’t got ready money, not with old Gresham eating out of your hand.’
Mr Happerton hesitated. He had a scheme in his head to which, he knew, Captain Raff would eventually have to be made party. But he also knew that the longer he could keep full details of the plan from Captain Raff’s enquiring eye, the happier he would be. He thought that he might tell Captain Raff – not everything, but – something.
‘Certainly I have the horse,’ he said. ‘But that isn’t the end of the affair. To do what we wish to do will take a mint of money.’
‘So you’re going to back it, are you?’ Captain Raff said knowledgeably. ‘I thought you would. There was a group of fellows the other night at the Blue Riband saying that you wouldn’t, but I told them “If you knew Happerton as I do, you’d say different.” But you’ll not get much in the way of odds, you know, what with it being in the papers and so forth. But I’m sure you know your own business.’
‘Well, maybe I do … Raff, why did you sell out of the 25th, eh?’
Captain Raff nearly shrieked.
‘That’s a terrible question to ask a fellow, knowing how I was situated, and how the mess turned against me, and what Colonel Devonish said …’
‘Precisely. There’s some questions you don’t care to be asked, and some I don’t care to neither. That’s why we are such good friends and fall on each other’s necks so happily.’ At this moment the only thing Mr Happerton looked ready to see fall on Captain Raff’s neck was a noose. ‘Now, just be a good fellow, do you hear, and when there’s anything to know you’ll be the first to know it.’
‘You ain’t angry with me?’ Captain Raff asked.
‘No I ain’t. But don’t go telling fellows you meet at the Blue Riband whether you think I’m likely to back a horse or not.’
‘And … would you like a game of billiards, old fellow?’ Captain Raff asked, almost tearfully.
‘No I shouldn’t. Go and find Wilkins the secretary. Perhaps he’ll play with you now your subscription’s paid.’
And Mr Happerton made his way back down the marble staircase, leaving Captain Raff to recall the various reasons why he had sold out of the 25th, and why the fellows in the mess had turned against him, and what Colonel Devonish had said.
Leaving St James’s, Mr Happerton marched back to Piccadilly, proceeded a little further along it and then turned left into the Green Park, where it was very bright and blue and there were nursemaids out with their charges and old gentlemen rambling through the spring sunshine. Keeping to the left-hand side of the rail he strolled along at a brisk pace, came to the western gate and strode into Park Lane. It was the part of London that Mr Happerton liked best. He had walked down it when he was a boy and had no money, and he fully intended to be driven down in that bright, unclouded future when he was as rich as Croesus. Here there were great carriages sweeping by and gentlemen’s cobs heading for the Row, and Mr Happerton bobbed admiringly along beside them before veering sharp right into Mount Street, where he arrived eventually before a little house with turned-down blinds and a door so freshly painted that it looked as if it had been furbished up by the letting agent only the other week. What Mr Happerton did on these premises was a mystery, but he was there an hour – the gentlemen’s cobs were out in profusion now, and the carriages continued to roll along Park Lane – and when he left the prettiest little white hand could be glimpsed at the window waving him off.
Quite what Mr Happerton did during the remainder of the day, where he ate his luncheon, how he occupied his afternoon, what clubs, horse-dealers’ and saddle-makers’ shops he looked into, and how he got his tea, was his own affair, but at six o’clock he walked up to the house in Belgrave Square as fresh-complexioned and jaunty as on the moment he had quitted it, just as Mr Gresham’s doctor was standing on the step with his black medical bag pulled up under his arm. It was only natural that Mr Happerton should wish to enquire after his father-in-law’s health, and he did this with the greatest suavity.
‘He is coming on, I take it?’ he asked, while the doctor stood on the step buttoning his coat.
‘Well – I rather think not. There’s no organic disease, I should say …’
‘He seems very tired.’
‘That is it exactly. You had better keep him comfortable.’
Mr Happerton said that he would keep him comfortable, shook the doctor’s hand, nodded at the butler, who, hearing the conversation, had had his good opinion of Mr Happerton confirmed, and went into the drawing room. There was no one there but Mr Gresham, who was sitting in an armchair, and some powder, or assemblies of powder, which the doctor had left lying on a table nearby. He looked very old, and the newspaper he was holding shook in his hand.
‘Well, sir,’ said Mr Happerton in a booming voice, ‘I gather you are coming on splendidly.’
‘Is that what the doctor said?’ Mr Gresham asked, with a rather pathetic eagerness.
‘Well – these medical men are always very cautious, I fear. Should you like me to have anything fetched for you?’
‘No, no. I shall do very well.’
‘There is no business I can attend to on you
r behalf?’
‘Perhaps you might send to my chambers for the Tenway Croft papers. It is a fortnight, you know, since I looked at them.’
‘I shall have a message taken round,’ Mr Happerton said, privately resolving that the Tenway Croft papers should come nowhere near Belgrave Square.
He found his wife in a little sitting room that she had appropriated for her own use on an upper floor of the house. There had been a time in the early weeks of their marriage when, entering a room after some absence, he had saluted his wife on the cheek in that expression of marital harmony which is so very pleasant to behold. Now he merely said:
‘Did you go out at all today?’
‘I took Father to the park. And cousin Harriet was here for luncheon. It was all very dull.’ She did not ask him what he had been doing.
‘You’re a dear, good girl and I’m sure Papa is very pleased with you.’
She gave him a queer look, seemed as if she might be about to say something and then thought better of it. She was always giving him queer looks, he reflected. But she had come up trumps with that cheque. It was all very strange.
There was a guest at dinner that night. This was the Honourable Major Stebbings, the eldest son of the late Mrs Gresham’s younger sister. His presence at Belgrave Square, where he had not been more than half a dozen times in his life, had come about in this manner. ‘I never could forgive poor Julia for throwing herself away on that Mr Gresham,’ his mother had said to him. ‘But now they say he is ill, and your cousin Rebecca, whom I always thought a well-conducted girl of whom something could be made, has married a dreadful man that no one knows anything about. You had better go and dine there, Henry, and see what is going on.’ And so the Honourable Major Stebbings, greatly regretting his lost dinner at the club, had gone. He was a tall, thin man of perhaps thirty-five, his hair already greying at the temples, very diligent in his professional duties and very dull, who, in addition, had been got at by serious religion. Hearing a little of Mr Happerton, and not liking what he had heard, he had come to Belgrave Square, if not determined to find fault, then anxious to resist any of the blandishments that might conceivably be thrown at him. ‘I never was at a race meeting but twice in my life,’ he replied to the first question asked of him, and Mr Happerton knew that he had best be careful.
It was a very dull dinner. To the old butler, who crept among them with a bottle of Marsala, the four figures seated at the dining table in the big old room with its bleary chandeliers must have looked like so many effigies in their tomb. In addition to his seriousness, the Honourable Major Stebbings was particular about what he ate, and sent back several dishes untasted, to the distress of the cook. As for the others, Mr Gresham nodded between the courses and Mrs Rebecca frankly sulked, and only Mr Happerton, who gobbled up his cutlets as if he had had no food since breakfast, seemed not to be cast down. Still, it was a family gathering, and such things are not generally allowed to pass without some small attempt at conversation.
‘How is your mother, Henry?’ Mr Gresham asked at one point, various pleasantries from Mr Happerton about the new overground railway and the extension of the franchise having failed to stir any response. ‘I’m afraid we do not see her as much as we might.’ Mr Gresham had last set eyes on his sister-in-law three years ago.
‘She is very well, sir, for her age.’ Lady Stebbings considered herself a juvenile lady of fifty-seven, and never missed a day in her carriage on the Row. ‘But how are you? I understand you have not been well.’
‘Not well? No, I suppose not. But then, old gentlemen are sometimes not very well, aren’t they?’
‘Indeed, sir, I don’t doubt that you’ll outlive us all,’ said Mr Happerton good-humouredly. ‘But you shall not sit up all night if we can prevent it. You see, sir,’ he said, addressing himself to the Honourable Major Stebbings, ‘my father-in-law is a fanatic about his responsibilities. He will not allow that there are men forty years his junior happy to relieve him of his burdens.’
‘I shouldn’t care to give up work I knew was mine to do,’ the Honourable Major Stebbings said. He was a slow man, but he did think, as he considered the matter, that Mr Happerton was good-natured and that he might have misjudged him.
And so the dinner went on. Mr Gresham all but went to sleep between the courses; Mrs Rebecca looked sulkier than ever; the Honourable Major Stebbings sent back a summer pudding on the grounds that it would wreak havoc with his digestion, but consented to talk about the subject dearest to his heart, which happened to be military finance.
‘It is like this, sir,’ he said to Mr Gresham, ‘unless we get a more equitable system of provision we shall never do anything. The French and the Prussians will beat us at our own game, and then where shall we be?’ And Mr Gresham, nodding his head over his wineglass, said that he supposed it was very bad.
After dinner they repaired to the drawing room, and it was perhaps a little livelier, for all that the Honourable Major Stebbings would not touch a playing card and Mrs Rebecca could not for the life of her be induced to sing. Here again the Major noted the way in which Mr Happerton plumped up his father-in-law’s cushions, brought him his glass of hot-milk-and-arrowroot and was generally solicitous of him, and thought once more – he was a fair-minded man for all his stiffness – that he might have misjudged him.
‘He is not very well, I am afraid,’ he remarked to Mr Happerton as Mr Gresham, assisted by his daughter, had left the room to go to bed.
‘Well – perhaps not. The important thing, I think, is that he should be kept content and not over-exert himself. There’s port here if you would like it.’
‘I never drink port wine in the evening,’ said the Honourable Major Stebbings. But calling on his mother on the following afternoon, and seated in her drawing room, which was full of the gayest ornaments and decorations, out of which Lady Stebbings’ worn old face peered incongruously, he conceded that he might have done Mr Happerton an injustice. ‘I daresay he is not very gentlemanlike, and there are those dreadful pins he wears, and I gather he is making a fool of himself over some horse, but, really, I think my cousin could have done worse.’
‘And how is my brother-in-law?’ Lady Stebbings wondered.
‘He is not very well, I daresay. But then, he is rather old.’
‘Oh, horribly old,’ said Lady Stebbings, who considered herself a blooming girl still. ‘And how is my niece Rebecca? Does marriage suit her?’
‘I thought her deuced cross,’ the Honourable Major Stebbings said.
‘I’ve no patience with those Greshams,’ Lady Stebbings said, and went back to looking at her milliners’ samples.
‘Your cousin seems a very well-informed man,’ said Mr Happerton to his wife, after the Honourable Major Stebbings had taken his leave and they sat together in the empty drawing room, with the candles burning low.
‘Those military men always give themselves airs.’
Mr Happerton stared at his wife. She was sitting in an armchair, with her head set back against the antimacassar, as young ladies are advised to sit in etiquette books, eating grapes from a bowl on her lap, but with a decorum and in a silence that would have had the compilers of the etiquette books nodding in approval, and she looked sandier-haired and greener-eyed than ever. And again Mr Happerton wondered at her. He had tried respectful attentiveness, and this had failed. He had tried brusque jocularity, and thought that this had failed too. He did not quite know how to induce his wife to respond to him, but he knew that her glacial consumption of the grapes rather scared him. But Mr Happerton prided himself on his thick skin, so he told himself that for once he would be matter-of-fact, let the consequences be what they might. Waiting until all the grapes had been eaten up, he said:
‘Now look here, Becca. There is something I want to tell you. You know that I have bought this horse, Tiberius.’
‘Certainly I know it.’ She was looking at him stealthily, with her great green eyes flashing.
‘It will wear your colours when it
runs.’ Privately Mr Happerton wondered what these colours might look like – he had never seen a horse run in sea-green and sandy red. ‘Is that not something?’
The look in her eye said that it was something. ‘Where is the horse?’
‘In Lincolnshire. The man I bought it from still has it. It may be convenient to keep it there. I don’t just know the best thing to do at the moment.’
‘Perhaps Captain Raff can advise you.’
‘Captain Raff could not advise me where to eat my dinner,’ Mr Happerton pronounced in his briskest manner. ‘Let’s not have any shilly-shallying about this. I am engaged on a little scheme that may make our fortunes.’
‘If you want more money from Papa you had better say so, and I shall ask him.’
‘Well then – ask.’
He was surprised at how easily the business was conducted. He reached out to draw her to him, and she snatched his hand away and grasped it between her fingers so violently that he whistled.
‘Gracious, Beck, you’ll break a fellow’s wrist if you go on like that.’
‘Shall I? I wonder.’
Later, as he lay in bed, a foot or two from the sea-green eyes, now closed, and the sandy hair, now done up under a nightcap, he thought about the other part of his scheme. It was, as Captain Raff had deposed, extremely risky. There was every chance that it would not work. But then, he thought, even if it did not work, he could not see how the trail should be traced back to him. And the capital it might realise would transform his modest resources into a cataract of money. It was about midnight now, and Mrs Rebecca slept soundly on, but Mr Happerton was not in the least tired, and so he lay awake, listening to the sound of her breathing, and musing on his opportunities, on Scroop Hall and its great wild garden, and the black horse in its stable, as the wind blew over the Belgravia rooftops and the sound of the policeman’s tread echoed in the street below.
